Nova Burst
by AllForFire
Summary: Sometimes, even a small spark can light the path through darkness. Others, a Nova bursts into existence, granting fire to burn through the night. XCOM 2 Character backstory. Note: Written before game's release, some details inevitably a little off. '
Greetings all!

As I write this, we are mere hours away from Episode 60 of Christopher Odd's First XCOM 2 plathrough, the Climactic Finale as He and the Brave Souls of Menace 1-5 storm the Final Mission!

And I for one, am actively praying that they all make it through...

So what is _this_ , you might ask?

This my friends was the backstory I wrote for a character I planned to have in my own playthrough, thought up weeks before the game's actual release. Now, evidently she kicked as and took names applenty in my own game, but then I thought, "Well hang on how cool would it be to share this character, maybe even with Chris himself?"

Sadly, the playthrough was already well underway by that time I thought of it, and I figured, ah well, next run around.

And now, with the current run about to raise the final curtain...

To be honest, this is also a little something to tide you guys over until I can get back on track for "An Odd Bunch Of Soldiers". After I finally had gotten Chapter 8 out, I really just felt like taking a short respite, and then the day after that Term started back up...

I've only just gotten my notes for episode 22 done up, just to illustrate. Yeah...

I hope this won't feel too much like filler, and hey, if you guys like it, maybe I can break things up from time to time with other of my characters backstories in the future!

 ** _Note:_** Again, I stress: this was written BEFORE the game was released and therefore, obviously, before we (or at least I) know exactly what was the 'real' what behind how we actually develop a certain tech illustrated here, as well as other potentially obvious discrepancies. Some tweaking could be done, but honestly I just felt like giving it to you guys just as it was when I first conjured her up.

2nd Note: Before you ask, NO, the "Axle" that appears here is in NO WAY the same "Axle" that appears in Chris' run/An Odd Bunch Of Soldiers". I'd actually based her off of a Support I had in my EU/EW campaign with the same nickname. Small world/nickname pool, huh?^^

Well, enough gibber-gabber on my part. I hope you can enjoy this, I'm going to resume praying for Menace 1-5, and I hope we ALL can survive Episode 60 in a few hours.

Cheers Everyone!

 _ **Disclaimer:**_ I own nothing of XCOM 2, only my character.

 _ **Nova Burst**_

* * *

Kathryn "Nova" Wallace

Nationality: United Kingdom

Current Age: 30

Gender: Female

Ethnicity: Caucasian

Hair Color/Style: Raven, done in a loose ponytail with bangs

Eye Color: Steel-Blue

Height: 5 foot 8'

Weight: Approximately 130 pounds

* * *

Kathryn is part of a specific generation. Twelve years old when the aliens first arrived and little older when XCOM fell and the Earth capitulated, by all rights she should be part of those who grew up swallowing ADVENT's propaganda by the spoonful. Or encouraged/forced to under penalty of ostracization, incarceration or death.

But Kathryn was luckier. Or at least lucky enough that, when her parents were amongst those to perish amidst the initial plasma bombings, she was wily enough, and more importantly scared enough to run.

Unnoticed amidst the chaos and forgotten in the aftermath, Kathryn's kind were a dime-a-dozen in those early days before ADVENT started "taking care of them". Wouldn't do to have any sort of blemish in a supposedly 'perfect' future. Terrified, wide-eyed street rats just trying to find a home. Or even just something to eat. A lot never saw another birthday. Most others, nobody knows and rarely care.

Kathryn was also tough. When it came to her against the world, she fought tooth and nail just to see another day. And when it was her against some other desperate soul with a switchblade, she would be the one walking away, tear-stricken, with the bag full of half-eaten trash.

Being tough doesn't make you any less susceptible to dying though. After six years of eking out survival and dodging the ADVENT equivalent of Child Services (More like Vermin Eradication Squad, Kathryn would snort. She never watched many of those sappy TV shows on the telly before, but she was fairly certain that ACTUAL Child Services didn't carry stun batons and mag pistols under their nice 'friendly' clean coats.), she knew it was time to get out of the Dodge that London had become. How long she would last once on the outside was up for grabs, but it was far past the point of being of any real concern. She'd take her chances anywhere other than here.

But Kathryn had one last advantage that led her to where she is today. She still knew how to be kind. Lord Almighty above knows how, but she still remembered Isaac Asimov's definition of what it means to be human, even as the aliens work to grind it out of us.

Her 'plan' was to take an potent but still portable explosive she'd painstakingly managed to swipe from a lax ADVENT post, and walk along the old tube tunnels (ADVENT "Air-Snakes" had rendered them woefully obsolete) and walk until she found a point weak enough to blow her way to freedom, or until she couldn't walk anymore. A stupid plan by all accounts, but she had nothing better, and was willing to make an educated guess that dying via exhaustion or rock fall would still be a better alternative to anything ADVENT would cook up for her.

Then as she was trudging through the old stone pathways she found a right sight. A working tube car, passengers and everything. Passengers that were quick to point pistols at her (They still had _bullets_ for those?) until they saw her age and more importantly, her lack of any real arms or armor. Mostly older ladies and gentlemen, but a few younger blokes and lasses, and even a handful of kids no older than her.

Apparently these folks had the same idea of vacating the premises as she did, except their execution would be orders of magnitude more dramatic. Instead of a simple bomb, they'd spent the last few months rewiring and getting this car and its path up and running, planning to ride it until its dead end and further, ramming it through the walls and out the other side onto the absolute outer limits of the city, potentially even opening up a bona-fide escape route for others to follow them and for those 'rebel' blokes to sneak in from.

An epic plan…except that the commotion would be sure to draw ADVENT's attention faster than they would be able to get away, assuming they even walked away from the crash unscathed. When she said as much, they grew grim, but no less determined. An older fellow by the name of Elias said that was a long shot, the escape tunnel bit a fantasy even, but they had to try, even more so when he pulled out what he said was the other real reason they were doing this. A vial, no bigger than her forearm, containing something shiny and orange. The stuff they used in those fancy clinics in the nicer parts of town, but pure, unprocessed. Swiping even this much over time had been a miracle, he said, and if they could get it to the resistance, then…then it would probably help a lot they figured, finishing somewhat lamely. They knew it had something to do with genetics, but not much else.

Kathryn didn't really know how she felt about this resistance and she wouldn't pretend to grasp the full scope of what was going on but she knew one thing: these people were never going to make it. _One_ _or two_ of them might survive impact and manage to slip away in the confusion, but the vial would likely be smashed or unwieldy to retrieve, and they likely wouldn't get far.

Unless…She mentioned the explosive she had with her. What if she went ahead and blew the wall herself? Then ADVENT swoop in, grab her, think they have the only culprit, leave…which would leave the way clear for the group to get away cleanly before the cleanup crew arrives to secure the breach.

They all looked at her as if she'd grown a second head, jaws slack in shock.

"Are you mad, girl?! Do you even know what they'll _do_ to you?!"

"Things a lot worse than being crushed to death." Kathryn answered with a quiet tone. "But my life against all of yours? And if getting this stuff to these 'resistance' blokes is as important as you're saying, is my life worth the rest of the city, maybe even the _world_?"

No one knew what else to say in the face of such a candid display of selflessness.

"…What's your name?" Elias asked.

She blinked. She remembered _her own name_ , obviously, but…

"Kathryn. My name is Kathryn Wallace." Technically, if a copy of her birth certificate still existed somewhere, it would say that her full name was Kathryn Eleanor Saint-Claire, but Kathryn was what everyone she'd ever cherished had called her, it was the last thing her parents had called her as they screamed at her to run and hide, and she'd be damned if anything else would be written on whatever tombstone she'd be lucky enough to receive.

And it just felt so… _something_ to say it out loud to these people, and in that moment she realized: this was the first time in six years she'd said her name out loud. First time in six years anyone had asked for it actually…Well, anyone that hadn't been about to grab or shank her.

Eventually, unable to change her mind or offer an alternative, each of them poured their manifold, heartfelt thanks unto her, some of them even hugged her. Finally, just as she was about to hop off the tram and head towards her chosen fate, Elias caught up to her, leaning in with a hand on her shoulder.

"You could have just bowed out and waited for us to fail, then escaped yourself. It takes a special kind of heart to do what you're about to do Kathryn, never let anyone tell you otherwise."

To be honest the thought had never even crossed her mind, but she felt little need to interrupt.

"And it's not the kind of heart we intend to leave to rot."

Then he leaned back with a nod full of respect and eyes full of the promise of something she couldn't identify. Under those eyes and the grateful ones of everyone else on the tram, she nodded back, turned right around, and soldiered on through the tunnel.

She didn't know how much time passed until she reached the solid yet still obviously crumbling wall, but here she was. Absently, she had heard the metallic whine of rails as the group evidently powered up the car to follow a ways behind her, but it had stopped a while ago. She hoped they were far back enough to go unharmed and unnoticed, but also close enough to bolt when their cue came up.

Speaking of which, for all their pomposity over their technology, ADVENT sure didn't see fit to outfit their ordinance with anything more complex than a button. Did it even have a delay, or would it just explode immediately? Having gotten this far, Kathryn decided her succeeding in destroying this wall superseded her potential survival, so she stood right at the foot of the wall in front of the largest crack she could find, and held her finger over the trigger.

Was this the part where she was supposed to say a prayer? Whatever faith she might have had in a higher power had sort of vanished over the years. But if there was one thing she still chose to believe in, it was doing good wherever and in whatever way you could. Maybe that orange goop was really just fancy Vaseline, but at least she was helping save more than just her own life tonight, and spreading hope that it _was_ possible to defy ADVENT, to escape them, to fight back.

A small smile on her lips, she pushed the button.

It beeped and blinked a first time. It didn't explode. It was in this crystal clear moment that Kathryn realized that if ADVENT didn't find a LIVE 'sole culprit' at the scene, they would never vacate the area quickly enough to let the others pass before they sealed off the hole.

Kathryn whirled herself around and ran as far and fast as she could, increasingly loud and rapid beeps ringing in her ears, finally throwing herself flat what she hoped was far enough away. A nanosecond later, quaking and deafening noise filled her shattered world.

A minute that felt like an hour later, she groggily pulled herself up and half hobbled, half crawled over the debris of the impromptu opening, big enough that the tram would have easily passed, she idly noted through the haze in her brain.

The moon. She could see the moon, was the first thing her addled mind thought as she stepped out into the open. In the city, all those fancy eyesores they called buildings and all the constant lights made it nearly as impossible to see the sky as the smog of days long past. But now, in this crazy, almost dream-like moment, she could see the moon, round and silver and surrounded by a smattering of shining starlight.

Then the sirens pierced her still-ringing ears and strobing red lights flared her shaky vision white.

Kathryn closed her eyes. If this was the beginning of her end, she wanted that picture of celestial beauty to be the last thing she saw, not more of ADVENT's pathetic pre-packaged boxes.

The crippling shock of a stun baton came less than a few moments later.

In the stifling atmosphere of an interrogation room, they didn't even begin asking questions until after having a go at her. She couldn't even understand half of what they were yelling at her, in the brief instances she bothered to listen past the fists and the shocks.

Then some… _thing_ entered the room. Pink and bug-eyed and more anorexic than any of the women she remembered seeing in her mum's magazines. It stood stooped before her chair-bound form, chittered once, then with nary a warning grasped the whole front of her skull in its wide hand, its own cranium flashing a garish purple, and it felt like it was pressing a scalding laundry iron directly onto her brain.

It was digging into her mind. Somehow, someway she knew this, like some sort of deep-rooted primal instinct, but instead of triggering tetanizing fear, all she felt was the urge to resist, to block it out, force it out, because if she didn't, then the others would never get far enough away in time. With a sensation like boulders grinding against each other, she fought a battle devoid of fists but just as visceral, until finally the pink abomination had enough of her unexpected resistance, chittered to its compatriots, the painful jolt of a baton coursed through her again.

Kathryn knew she would never hold out indefinitely. Plus, if she did, that would only cause them to further suspect she was covering something up that was big enough to go through all this effort and struggle. They would send out advanced patrols, and all this would be for naught.

So instead she schooled her own thoughts. Before the monster renewed its efforts, she carefully laid it all in place for it to stumble across. She had stolen the explosive, gone into the tunnel and blown up the wall with nary a care if she lived or died. No one and nothing else. Simple as that. The whole truth and nothing but the truth.

For several long, agonizing moments she fought as subtly as she could to hold this constructed scenario up across her mind, like holding up a forged masterpiece before a collector's scrutiny.

Then the pressure finally lifted, and nothing could stop her from slumping into the rigid steel chair, sweat-slicked and utterly spent. Darkness finally claimed her after she faintly heard the pink thing chitter one last time, and felt two armored arms begin to roughly haul her up.

When she came to, she was in a cell somewhere. Or more accurately a holding pen, just three walls and a laser grid forming her empty cage, the hard floor and walls devoid of anything else.

Her sense of time twisted and warped, but she couldn't have spent more than a week in there, because she hadn't yet died of hunger, and had only nearly died of thirst twice before her jailers tossed a bowlful at her face to keep her quiet. Living off the street had also given her a fair amount of experience with mild starvation. She would've cursed this fact, had her throat been less dry and stomach less cavernously empty. Listening to sick, disjointed screams as the containment units around her emptied out, she was growing nigh-on certain it was a kinder fate than whatever awaited her and her fellow captives.

Again, Kathryn didn't pray. Instead, she merely wished. She wished that all the people on that relic of a bygone era in a dark stone tunnel made it to safety. She wished that orange stuff they got out helped whatever resistance was out there. And most of all, she wished she knew that she had at least managed to do some genuine good in her short time on this gods-forsaken Earth, to make up for all those alleys she'd left bloodied and all the broken souls she'd snuffed out like candles for the sake of her own petty survival.

A sonorous boom and the screech of crashing metal answered her.

Shaking and slapping herself to make sure she wasn't just having a deprivation-induced bout of dementia, Kathryn got as close as she dared to her cell's 'door'. Peering around the edge, she saw an ADVENT soldier turn a corner…

 _WHUMP_

…And promptly get tossed back around, faceplate cracked and out cold.

Blinking and rubbing her eyes, Kathryn reopened to a sight that made her jaw drop and her heart nearly burst.

Warriors. Warriors, not soldiers. Soldiers knew rank, protocol, order. Warriors knew skill, battle and passion. And these warriors had just came thundering in, somehow tossing ADVENT troops around like ragdolls, the flags of long-forgotten nations emblazoned proudly on their protective collars. Had she water to spare, she likely would have wept as seeing the Union-Jack for the first time since she was ten on the collar of the apparent leader.

Said leader's face was also rather familiar.

"…Elias?" She croaked out as best she could.

He snapped to her instantly, eyes zeroing in before they widened.

"Kathryn!" And with that, he simply swung out both arms before drawing them in, the walls parts hosting the laser emitters caving in in synch, the red bars fizzling out.

 _…_ _What?_ Was all the time she had to think of as her mind and body finally gave out, slumping to the floor, and the sweet black embrace of nothingness cradled her.

* * *

The next time she felt like she was dragging herself back up from the dead, a steel ceiling and minimal, blue-tinted lighting greeted her, for which she was grateful, because right now anything more would have likely lanced through her skull enough to make her wretch.

She tried to move, but her limbs felt like lead. And when she opened her mouth to call out, she found her throat only slightly less dry than before she collapsed.

It was around this time that enough of her higher brain function returned for cogent thought, but not yet enough for proper recollection or rationality. The result? Panic.

 _Where am I? What happened? Am I in a hospital? A lab? Do I still have all my organs?_ Kathryn's thought swerved and swirled, growing stranger and more erratic, her heartrate climbing all the while until finally a beeping alarm went off somewhere around her, the sudden noise would have made her jump if she had any energy to move.

"Whoa there! Let's settle down shall we?" A soft voice sounded off beside her as a hand gently laid itself atop hers. Sluggishly, Kathryn turned her head, and came face-to-face with an angel.

Sandy blond hair cut in a bob that hung just above her coat-clad shoulders, the sides slightly curving to frame her heart-shaped face beautifully. Her skin was slightly tanner than Kathryn's own, though nowhere remotely near brown. She wore a kind look, rosy lips curved and brown eyes so bright they nearly mirrored amber.

"Hey there sweetie. No need to get all bent out of shape. You're safe now, I promise." She soothed, rubbing circles on the back of Kathryn's hand with her thumb.

Kathryn tried to find her voice, but all that came out was a hoarse groan.

"Easy. You came in here with severe dehydration and more than a little starved. I'm amazed you're even awake. That much trauma in such a short time, and so young…" She brushed an errant bang of Kathryn's raven hair, sighing. "This never-ending war is making victims out of all of us." Then her eyes refocused unto Kathryn's. "Listen to me prattle on like some old biddy. Where are my manners? My name is Sandra Webb. Most around here call me Axle though. Because I keep everyone spinning on, understand?"

Kathryn nodded, feeling the urge to chuckle if she could.

"And Elias told me your name is Kathryn, right?"

The familiar name brought about a renewed bout of attempted speech and movement.

"I'll take that as a yes. He's fine, don't worry. And we pretty much have you to thank for that." She smiled through the confused expression that spread across Kathryn's face. "A topic for another time. You still look like death warmed over, and I doubt you're feeling up to eating anything solid just yet."

Even as Kathryn reluctantly nodded her head, her eyelids already began to droop once more. She didn't (nor could she really) fight it when Sandra (she still preferred it to calling her Axle) gently passed her hand over her eyes to coax them close.

"Rest up, little spark. The world's spinning just a bit longer thanks to what you've done, you've earned a break."


End file.
